Wildalone (21 page)

“I just . . . I didn't think you were a student. Are you in graduate school?”

“No, I'm a senior. Took time off and now have to finish.”

“But then how can you live in New York?”

“I have class only three days a week. The commute is less than an hour.”

It made sense—I had heard that in America commutes were the norm, not the exception. What didn't make sense were his next words: “You won't have to worry about seeing me around the house. I took a dorm room, so I'll have a place to crash when I come to school.”

“The house . . .
your
house?” This time the logic escaped me. Given how things had ended the night before, why was Jake so certain I would be at their house again? Then it finally dawned on me: “You never told Rhys, did you?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted the choice to be yours.”

“Jake, he is
your
brother, not mine. You should be the one to tell him.”

“Tell him what? That we made a fool of him last night, lying to him through the entire dinner?”

He was right: telling Rhys now would have been incredibly selfish. Yet selfish was exactly what I needed him to be, as it seemed the only way he could be with me.

“So then . . . that's it? You really came here only to apologize?”

“Rhys cares about you too much. I can't step in the middle.”

“And how I feel doesn't matter?”

“Of course it does. But can you honestly tell me that being with him was a mistake? That you feel nothing for him? Absolutely nothing?”

I knew what answer he wanted to hear, but it would have been a lie. So, while he held the door open for me, I wished him a safe trip back to the city, said good night, and left.

BEFORE I COULD FIGURE OUT
if Rhys really cared about me or not, Forbes announced its Fall Dance.

“I bet you anything that Ben will swoop in first,” Rita chirped over cereal. “Have mercy on the guy, Tesh. It isn't his fault he failed Stalking 101 so miserably.”

“Mercy” probably meant agreeing to be his date, but when he asked, all I could do was soften the blow by telling him that I had half promised another guy already (which was a lie) and that I most likely wouldn't even go (which wasn't).

“Actually, skipping the dance won't make me inconsolable either.” He gave me one of his endearing, childish smiles. “But having you turn down my other offer might.”

“What other offer?”

“Scrabble Challenge. Starts at five, earlier that same day. You've played it, right?”

“No. What is it?”

“A board game. All-time American favorite. I thought it was also big in Europe, but maybe not so much?”

“It probably is. I'm just a music nerd, remember?”

“Then you'll love Scrabble, it's nerd heaven! Basically, you score points by forming words on a crossword grid. A bunch of us team up for a slam once a month.”

I smiled to myself. If Donnelly saw me trade off the keyboard for a game board, she was going to be a wreck.
I don't understand this waste of time, Thea. It is equivalent to suicide, for someone with your ambition.
Yet I didn't want to disappoint my friend (and how would Donnelly find out anyway?), so I said that a detour through nerd heaven the following Saturday would be lovely.

I was asked to the dance twice more that day. People were rushing to find dates, but I couldn't imagine going with someone other than Rhys or Jake. Not that I should have wanted to go with one of them, either. By now, Jake was probably back in New York, staying dutifully out of his brother's way
(and mine). As for Rhys, I had no idea whether I would hear from him again.

To my surprise, he called that same weekend.

“Aren't you sick of this campus? Let's escape the damn place for a few hours!”

“Rhys, don't act like nothing happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your strange mood the other day, after the dinner at your place.”

“Sorry, I was just . . . Jake had given me some bad news and it threw me off. That's not an excuse, I know. So let me make it up to you.”

“Make it up how?”

By taking me to the ocean, as it turned out. The town, Cape May, was a historic landmark at the southern edge of a peninsula off the New Jersey shore, a two-hour drive from Princeton. According to Rhys, this was the oldest seaside resort in the country, named after a seventeenth-century Dutch captain who charted the area. Now its main tourist attraction was the dazzling display of Victorian houses, decked out with white wooden balconies and bright-colored turrets.

It was already mid-October and too cold for the beach, so we just walked along the sand, jeans rolled up to our knees.

“What are you doing next Saturday?” Since he was always the one asking to see me, I decided to break the pattern, for once.

He smiled. “Sounds like I'm about to find out.”

“We have a dance at Forbes. Will you be my date?”

The seconds of silence began to accumulate.

“Look . . . if you don't want to, just tell me. Nobody will die.”

“What I want is to spend next weekend with you. But I don't think a dance at Forbes is a good idea.”

“Why not?”

He continued walking, eyes fixed on the foam that broke and formed again at our feet. “It's better to keep me out of your social life at school. At least for now.”

“I didn't realize being with you was strictly an off-campus offer.”

“Don't worry. Nothing with me will ever be strictly an off-campus offer.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. When he finally looked up, I sensed a new resolve in him.

“I can't be what you want me to be, Thea.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“Believe me, I do. And you have every right to want it. But it's something I cannot be.”

“Then why are we here?” Rita had been right: good luck with someone from the Ivy crowd.

“Because there has to be a compromise. What you want is a boyfriend, isn't it?”

Boyfriend.
The label of ultimate curse. To me it was a given—in Bulgaria people were either together or not, there was nothing in between (at least not among my friends). Here, you graduated into someone's heart in stages: hanging out, hooking up, seeing each other, dating, going out, being exclusive . . . Just to keep the nuances straight was a science. Now I wondered where on that continuum Rhys had decided to place me.

“I'll come to the dance if it means so much to you, but that won't change anything.”

“What do you think I am trying to change?”

“I don't know. Me, I guess? I'm not exactly”—he took a deep breath, looked away and exhaled—“what they call a one-woman guy.”

There was no need to ask what he meant.

“Not that I want to be with anyone else—I don't. I am absolutely, desperately infatuated with you. You know this, right?”

“But?”

“But . . . I can't make promises that I will not keep.”

Will
, not
may
.

“The decision is yours, Thea.”

I tried to convince myself that staying with him was safe. That I could have this fantastic adventure and not fall in love, especially with someone who had made it clear he would never fall in love with me.

“So?” His lips touched my cheek. “We continue or not?”

“What if I said no?”

“Then I'd keep asking until you gave me the answer I want.”

I knew he meant it. I also knew there were many reasons to walk away. But one thing I loved about him: he wasn't a coward. Unlike Jake, he was not the type to give up and disappear when he wanted someone.

THE WEEK SLIPPED BY QUICKLY
. With midterms coming up, I couldn't focus on anything except piano and school. Rhys, on the other hand, had endless time at his disposal. He didn't seem to have a job (or to need one). There was no mention of parents. And he lived in that enormous house by himself, now that his brother had decamped for Manhattan.

Neither one of us mentioned the dance again, nor anything else we had said on the shore that day—it was easier to pretend the conversation had never taken place. But it had, of course. And if he insisted on staying out of my social life, then I was going to allow others back into it.

So when Ben came to pick me up for the promised Scrabble break on Saturday, I didn't think twice:

“Did you find a date for tonight?”

He shook his head. “I'm boycotting the event.”

“Not anymore.”

“No?” A smile caught his dimples as he began to realize what I was saying. “I thought I was.”

“You were. But this is college, right? We have to stay part of the pack.”

The “nerd heaven” he had promised me felt more like purgatory: an overheated game room; empty crossword grids on every surface, including the floor; and pepperoni pizza, to keep you occupied until it was your turn to play.

Ben explained the rules to me before he and I teamed up against two of his friends while everyone else watched. At first, it all went great. Then someone had the idea that I should play the next round without a teammate. Scrabble Challenge proper: the non–native speaker against some self-proclaimed thesaurus wiz.

Having become the center of the spectacle, I pulled seven wooden blocks and started shuffling them. The four-letter words were easy:
MIND
,
MOAN
,
MAIN
. Then I did five:
MANIA.

“You can do better than this.” Ben was staring at the blocks, no longer allowed to help me.

There had to be a six-letter word. And when I found it, I wished I had never walked into that game room. Or agreed to play. Or even heard of Scrabble.

I placed the letters on the board, hoping that no one would notice my shaking fingers. The
O
remained by itself.

“Challenge!” My opponent, a senior majoring in Classics, didn't waste a second. “It's MAE, not MAI.”

For once, my high school Latin was about to come in handy: I reminded the guy that “ai” and “ae” were both Latin equivalents of the Greek “αí.” When transcribing a Greek word into English, you could spell it either way.

Not according to Scrabble rules—the official dictionary rejected my spelling. While Ben was checking on his phone and showing everyone that
mainad
did exist as a recognized word, I couldn't take my eyes off the board. How had I picked these letters? This time it wasn't a vase or a paper topic assigned to me. I had simply dipped my hand into a pile of wooden blocks and, without thinking, pulled out exactly those seven.

“. . . which is technically against the rules, but you can go ahead anyway.”

Ben seemed to be talking to me, so I forced myself to pay attention. “Sorry, go ahead with what?”

“Take another turn. With the same letters.”

I reshuffled the blocks. With all eyes on me, the last thing I wanted was to argue my way out of this.

“Too bad you're missing an extra
D
for the girl's best friend,” someone joked behind me, having stolen a peek.

And this joke made me see the new word instantly, but it had nothing to do with diamonds. It had to do with a pair of creatures from an old legend, alleged to be only a myth:

This time, the letter on the side was
A
.

I felt the room close in on me.
Maenad
. . .
Daemon
. They were the same word. Almost the same, except for those interchanging
A
and
O
.

Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end.

That was it, the pun Giles hadn't solved! But how had my sister come up with it? Maybe this was the way ancient riddles revealed themselves—in stuffy game rooms, on perfectly normal college nights, in front of a crowd of pizza-eating students?

As it happened, the dictionary blessed the word (we all carried demons inside, so the second Latin spelling had managed to sneak itself in).